Things I liked:
- Walkman touch Music Player
- 3G support with video calls
- Wi-Fi
- 3 Megapixel camera
- 8GB of storage space
- Dedicated touch-sensitive player keys
- 262K color TFT touchscreen display
- Stereo Bluetooth (with 3.5 mm adapter included)
Things that disappointed me:
- Promo photos more impressive than the phone
- Location of Back Key
- No Memory card slot
- No EDGE Support
The Sony Ericsson W960 is the follow-up to the Sony Ericsson W950, which had an incredible 4GB of internal memory, but had no camera or wi0fi capabilities and so failed to catch on. In truth, the W960 is much closer, feature wise, to the Sony Ericsson P1 with almost the same hardware. The W960 has a dedicated walkman key, three touch sensitive keys for operating the music player and the long awaited walkman home screen application for fullscreen visualizations. I am sure you are as eager to hear about this phone as I was, so let’s get right to it.
First glance
The first time I saw the W960 product shots, I thought it was a beautiful phone. Sadly, that a is a bit misleading, because in person the phone looks a good deal cheaper than the pictures would lead you to believe.
The W960 is near identical in size and weight to the W950 – 109 x 55 x 16mm and weighs in at 119 g, which, considering the wealth of functionality in this handset is actually pretty light. The primary color scheme is black with white edging on the sides. At the top of the minimalist front panel are the video call camera and the earpiece. Just below the screen is a row of hidden touch screen keys that light up when you start the Walkman music player.
On the left side of the handset is the where they confused me. Every other Sony Ericsson smartphone has a back key on the right, next to the Jog Wheel. The back key is now on the front keyboard. The only thing next to the Jog Wheel now is the silver wrist strap eyelet, right next to the stylus compartment.
On the right side of the W960 are the volume keys and the camera shutter key. On the top, we find the off/on key, which is also used to go from normal to flight mode. On the bottom is the Sony Ericsson Fastport and the pinhole microphone. Just above the microphone is a near invisible status LED that shows red when the battery is dead and is green when the phone is on the charger.
The back panel is a plain black matte plastic, with a circle of brushed metal around the 3 Megapixel camera lens and the LED flash, right next to the loudspeaker grill.
Under the back cover is the standard Sony Ericsson BST -33 Li-Po battery. It has a capacity of 900 mAH and while they promise 370 hours of standby time and 9 hours of talk time, but in practice that is a bit…optimistic. In reality, the battery lasted about 4 days when it was connected to a 3G network.
Easy messaging
We have come to expect the messaging capabilities of any Smartphone to be top-notch, and the Sony Ericsson W960 is no exception to that rule. You can enter text with the on screen QWERTY virtual keyboard or using the stylus with touchscreen. The Sony Ericsson W960has an enhanced T9 dictionary that can be edited with your own words and phrases.
Whether SMS, MMS or EMS, all messages share just one inbox, with RSS having its own dedicated application. Email has its own inbox, with a separate email inbox for each account. One nice feature is that font size can be changed and, in fact, there are a wide variety of additional editing tools.
The email client supports POP3, SMTP and IMAP, as well as TLS and SSL encryption. The Sony Ericsson W960 supports various push email providers, with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync preinstalled.
Walkman Rocks
The Sony Ericsson W960 has one of the most elaborate music players I have ever seen in a mobile phone. There are the usual playlists with loop and shuffle options and the standard equalizer presets. The touch sensitive media keys respond to both fingers and other items.
Just like you could with the W950, all your music can be sorted by Rating and /or Mood, both being labels you add to your tracks, so you can listen to music that matches the mood you are in at the time.
Track filtering is quite advanced, with sorts by artist, album, playlists and compilations. One neat feature is the auto-playlist, with the ability to create a playlist based on rules you set, such as specific years or decades, least played, last played or so on. One thing to note is that for this to work, it is important that the ID3 tags be set up properly.
Searching for tracks is done with the search box in the lower left corner; it can even recognize handwriting if you have that set as the input option. There are several fullscreen visualizations that play in the background, changing in speed and pattern to the mood label of the current track. Also available is a sleep timer that will shut it off after a predetermined period. The thing I thought was just the coolest was that you could use the jog wheel to scroll through the tracks.
The video player is nice, with landscape mode for the fullscreen view, and the W960 supports H.264 streaming, so watching hi-quality TV is possible.
Finally: a camera
The Sony Ericsson W960 has a 3.2 Megapixel camera with auto focus and a2 LED flash, just like the P1 but unlike the W950. You hold the phone in landscape mode to take pictures and the interface is fairly intuitive, with all the settings in a toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
The camera interface has much in common with the latest round of Sony Ericsson phones, with similar functions and graphics. The camera offers fully automatic exposure control and three quality levels, with a manual overexposure option from the viewfinder.
The camera’s autofocus settings have a dedicated macro mode, with the ability to turn autofocus off for faster snapshots. There is auto white balance, but with 4 presets to choose from, depending on the circumstances. There is an array of effects for both pictures and video, such as Sepia, Black and white and Nature.
Like other smartphones, the Sony Ericsson W960 has a maximum video resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at 15 fps. I was a bit disappointed to see them use QVGA and such a low frame rate. You can lower the resolution to gain a faster frame rate, but the detail is so low as to be inadequate. There is no preset length, your only limitation being the amount of available memory.
Super Fast
There are various options for connecting your Sony Ericsson W960 to a computer or other devices. For instance, you can use either Bluetooth or a USB cable. The Bluetooth capabilities mean you could use a stereo Bluetooth headset to listen to music. When I connected to my PC via the USB cable, the phones 8 GB of memory showed up in Windows Explorer, like any flash drive. One neat thing I liked was that being connected via USB also charged the phone while it was connected.
The Sony Ericsson W960 has tri-band GSM/UMTS support (GSM 900/1800/1900) and supports GPRS for data transfers in non-3G enabled networks. EDGE support would have been nice here, but is lacking as it is in previous smartphones. I would also have liked to see HSPDA, but for their own reasons Sony Ericsson decided not to support it.
One nice change from the W950 is the addition of Wi-Fi, with the integrated connection manager doing its job very well. You have the ability to set priority for which connection (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc) you want, a nice change from the S60 smartphones.
The Sony Ericsson W960 uses the Opera 8.0 browser for surfing the web, a popular option in mobile devices. While not as nice as Nokia’s browser, it is fast and has many viewing options.
Get planning
Alarms are about what you would expect, but at least you can set your own ringtones as an alarm sound or you can wake up to a radio station.
The calendar is also fairly standard, with expected day, weekly and month views and two time zones. Events can be recorded as Appointments, Reminders, anniversaries and all day events. You can set birthdays as anniversaries, so each year they come up again. There are many user-customizable features to be had here.
Like with any Sony Ericsson phone, to organize your daily routine you have Notes and Tasks. Tasks are simple events, while Notes are for, well, Notes. One surprise is that it recognizes handwritten notes.
The Task Manager is a small icon in the upper right corner of the screen, but it is so small you have to press it with the stylus. It has two tabs; the default one contains the Main Menu and Standby, as well as access to recent applications. The second tab has all the applications currently running and lest you terminate them one at a time.
In Summary
Without a doubt, this is the most functional Sony Ericsson Walkman ever. Nice changes from the W950 are seen in both hardware and system performance. In terms of software, it is second to the Nokia S60 only when it comes to VOIP capabilities, where Nokia is the clear leader.
It is curious they decided to use a touchscreen for a regular smartphone; pulling the stylus out for routine functions is a pain. I would have liked to have seen a D-Pad for one handed navigation. However, for the hardcore music fan willing to use both hands, the Sony Ericsson W960 will be a great choice.
  
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